


Dad Bob Zimmermann

by paintedrecs



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, Basically I love Jack okay, Character Study, Father-Son Relationship, Jack Feels, Jack-Centric, M/M, Overdosing, POV Jack, Pre-Slash, Self-Doubt, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 01:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6884377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedrecs/pseuds/paintedrecs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>anonymous asked:</em><br/>Okay but Dad Bob knew about Jack's photography talent/passion from Comic 12 of year one and that makes me so happy?</p><p> </p><p>In which <a href="http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/70578733783">Year One Comic Twelve</a> gains a glimpse into Jack's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dad Bob Zimmermann

**Author's Note:**

> This is halfway between a ficlet and a headcanon, [originally dashed off on tumblr](http://appreciatejack.tumblr.com/post/144482610568/okay-but-dad-bob-knew-about-jacks-photography) in response to an ask, because I have way too many feels about Jack. And about Jack's relationship with his dad, who loves him to (almost literal) pieces, which only makes Jack feel worse about his anxiety and perceived inability to live up to his legacy.

“He’s always been a better shot than me,” Dad Bob says of Jack, leaning forward to warmly grasp his future son-in-law’s hand. He’s talking about Jack’s photography, of course, but Jack’s shoulders tense anyway. This freshman - small, blond, frustratingly prone to collapsing in on himself when other players come too close - stole the winning shot that night. _Jack’s_ shot. The only kind that matters, even if his dad plays it off, making light of it in a misguided attempt to soothe Jack’s bubbling anxiety.

He’s been doing that since The Incident. Since the failed draft, since the pills. Since Jack woke up in a sterile hospital room, his dad’s back to him - his tall frame bowed by the weight of his son’s failure, grey streaked through his hair. He was standing at the window, blotting out Jack’s light, without meaning to. He’d never meant to. 

That was the worst part, Jack thought, trying to turn his head away in his web of tubes and needles, but even that slight noise was enough to bring his dad’s attention swinging back to him. Bright, focused, intent. His dark eyes shining with so much love, as they always had, but with the pride gone now. Maybe for good.

He’d tried, Jack told the therapists later, going through one after another until one finally stuck, a woman whose kindness was grounded in the type of no-nonsense realism he needed to brace himself against. He’d done everything he could. Pushed his body to the limit, then pushed some more, until the shaky foundations had fallen apart. 

“He loves me,” he agreed, watching as Dr. Caldeiro marked something down in her notebook. _But only because he has to_ , he thought, remembering the way his dad’s face had lit up the first time Jack begged for a pair of skates, the first time he swung his stick and shot the puck just past his dad’s reach. _I’m a disappointment_ , he added, letting the words - always festering in the back of his mind - come to the surface, settling on his tongue with a bitterness that made it difficult to swallow the new sets of pills he had to take. 

He was watched carefully now, even though he told them all, over and over, that he hadn’t meant to do it. The anxiety just…it wasn’t stopping. So he took another pill, to keep it at bay - then another. Then another, until the bottle fell from his fingers, until his dad, coming to see what was taking him so long, found him on the bathroom floor. 

“What’s something you love to do?” Dr. Caldeiro asked, then shook her head when he opened his mouth, _hockey_ forming on his lips. “A hobby of _yours_. Nothing your parents introduced you to, or signed you up for. If you had free time, off the ice, what would you be doing?”

He didn’t think omission counted as lying; it didn’t matter that his dad had given him his first camera, a small point-and-click box where you still had to feed in film and wait for it to be processed, not knowing until you had the thick packet of prints in your hand whether any of them had turned out at all. Most of Jack’s hadn’t, at first. But it hadn’t mattered: there were no expectations there. 

His dad was the kind of photographer who got distracted mid-shot, who chopped off heads and limbs (and, in group shots, assorted aunts and uncles) because he got wrapped up in conversations with them and forgot the lens wasn’t at his eyeline. He was friendly, funny, charming, always ready to talk his way into or out of any situation. He’d won Jack’s mom over in minutes, she admitted, laughing and resting her hand on his arm, her face tipped up to his in clear adoration, even after more than two decades of marriage. Even after the sorrow their only son brought into their lives. Maybe it drew them closer together, he sometimes thought on his darkest days: their shared disappointment in him.

Jack, despite growing into a face and body that mirrored his father’s, was quiet, solemn, and withdrawn. It took him a while to warm up to people - and it hardly seemed worth it, when his dad was standing by, able to sweep in and effortlessly befriend anyone he spoke to, pulling the attention away from the reserved boy at his side.

Jack took everything seriously, from his crayon portraits in school to his earliest skating lessons. “It’s okay to color outside the lines, honey,” his mom tried, but smiled at him and ruffled his hair when he only turned a frown in her direction. “My little perfectionist,” she sighed, and let him be.

He’d always liked photography. He liked the steady weight of a camera in his hands, the distance and objectivity it gave him. The sense of capturing moments in time, of recording history. When he peered through the lens, he wasn’t a part of the action, but he could flick a lever and draw closer to the scene, joining in without any eyes turning to him. Without anyone asking anything of him.

After rehab, his dad took him to the local camera shop and asked what he wanted, then stood back and let Jack take the lead with the salesman. The pride started trickling back in, little by little, as Jack debated shutter speed and ISO and aperture and barely technical terminology that flew right over his dad’s head. He paid for the camera Jack chose, then asked to see every roll, even when Jack explained the film was digital now. He asked for printed copies of his favorites, and framed them, displaying them in prominent spots throughout the house. 

As he set the latest - a shot of the peewee hockey team Jack had been coaching - on the mantel, he cleared his throat and broached the subject they’d all been avoiding for months. 

“You know, son,” he said, his eyes still on the photo, his capable, trophy-winning hands adjusting the frame, “you don’t have to play hockey. Not if you don’t want to. There are other careers; easier, less stressful ones. You can study anything you want - be anyone you want.” 

He meant well. He always had. But Jack’s throat tightened, and the camera shook in his hands.

He _wanted_. To take his photos, yes. But to play hockey, too. It wasn’t his dad’s voice that drove him to skate, to practice every day, that drove him to match - then exceed - his personal best every time he stepped into the rink.

He _wants_ : he thinks of blond hair, warm eyes, and a slim but deceptively muscular form that sprints across the ice, pulling Jack’s attention again and again. Dragging him away from the game. Distracting him, when he can’t afford distractions. When his dream - his dad’s dream, yes, but _his_ , he’d decided for himself that summer - is close enough to grasp again.

 “It was a lucky shot,” he tells Bittle, turning his back to him, shutting him out. Closing his eyes. Trying to remember how to breathe, how to slow the heartbeat throbbing in his ears.

**Author's Note:**

> I blog about Jack Zimmermann and zimbits on [appreciatejack](http://appreciatejack.tumblr.com/), about Sterek & fandom on [paintedrecs](http://paintedrecs.tumblr.com/), and about general stuff on [paintedlandscape](http://paintedlandscape.tumblr.com/). Come join me on any/all!


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